cracker: a bragging liar

Sunday, June 15, 2008

Had lunch today, for a change... it's only once a blue moon that I eat lunch!

Bumped into a few colleagues so we sat around the same table for the meal...

We started talking and... one was telling he was so fed up with litigation and wants to do conveyancing! Hahaha... no doubt conveyancing is a lot more less stressful, I'd surely agree! Coz I am no litigant too...

But sometimes, we don't get to choose what we want to do. When I first started chambering, I was so determined to be a criminal lawyer. And because of that, I've had some very painful experience. That totally changed my mind about pursuing a career in criminal litigation.

Then I went on to a corporate legal firm, but I find the corporate world unfriendly... didn't like defending big corporations in bullying the people... so I left... and find myself here at a firm in my home town.

Where the people is less complicated a lot more friendlier and approachable.

But, still having been a lawyer for nearly one year now, (I was officially a lawyer on 15.06.2007) all I can say is, it's not easy being a junior lawyer... only those who could endure judges' humiliation in court, those who could easily take the blame even though it's not his/her mistakes, those who could still drag him/herself to the office every morning knowing there'll just be "unfinishable" work waiting, those who could still smile at the end of the day after all the scoldings, threats and "unfriendly words" from clients, those who could still sleep at night... those who could still enjoy the "free time" of weekends...

only these can move ON, and hopefully, in 5 years time, to move UP to be a real lawyer!

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

For those who have never seen him smile... This picture is so precious! I am not even sure if BC has put up the correct picture (the picture was sourced from Bar Council website)

Here's a couple of Datuk Ian's more recent picture... that I could recognise as being him:

no smiley ey?

Datuk Ian recently made "explosive judicial disclosures" in open court where he was sitting for the proceedings of the election petition filed by the DAP candidate for the Sarikei Parliament seat. Please read the full text here which was summarised below:

What I am going to disclose relate to what happened after two of my judgements were handed down. One was the judgment in a libel case which I handed down on February 5 1997 (see Raveychandran v Lai Su Chon & Ors at here) by which I distinguished MGG Pillai V Tan Sri Dato Vincent Tan Chee Yioun & Other Appeals (1995) 2 MLJ 493 and refused to give what I consider to be astronomical award for damage to reputation in libel cases.

Shortly after those two judgements, the Judges Conference was held from April 24 1997. The then prime minister was scheduled to have a dialogue with the judges on that date. What was termed a dialogue and later reported as one was anything but a dialogue.

The then prime minister went there to issue a thinly veiled threat to remove judges by referring to the tribunal that was set up before and stating that though it may be difficult to do so, it was still done. He said all that after he had expressed his unhappiness with what he termed ‘the Borneo Case’ and after he had asked whether the judge who decided that case was present or not.

After he was done with issuing that threat, he then proceeded to express his view that people should pay heavily for libel.

He managed to get a single response from a Court of Appeal judge who asked whether he would be happy with a sum of RM1 million as damages for libel.

He approved of it and he later on made known his satisfaction by promoting this judge (since deceased) to the Federal Court over many others who were senior to him when a vacancy arose.

I was devastated after hearing all that but help came immediately after the “dialogue” was over when Federal Court judges came to my side and asked me to ignore him. Equally comforting were the words of my brother High Court judge who later told me that the then Prime Minister was too much.

It will be recalled that the then prime minister not long after he assumed office had said, in a much publicised campaign against corruption, that he will put the fear of God in man but this apparently, given his diatribe in that conference, changed to instilling a fear of him if any judgment is to his dislike.

A month later, Chin said he was packed off to a boot camp from May 26-30 together with selected judges and judicial officers. He said that the boot camp was without any doubt “an attempt to indoctrinate those attending the boot camp to hold the view that the government interest as being more important than all else when we are considering our judgement”.

Stating this devilish notion was by no less a person than the President of the Court of Appeal. Everyone was quiet during the question sessions. Also invited to the boot camp was a lecturer from a university who berated the election case and the bright spot in this episode was that a judicial officer, during question time, told the lecturer that she had no question but only a statement to make which was that the lecturer was in contempt of court.

The then prime minister was scheduled to talk but he did not turn up and instead sent his then deputy who instead of talking invited questions and the one question I remembered being asked was — Are politicians looking for girls when they are often seen loitering at posh hotel lobbies?

The perversion of justice did not stop there. My brother judge Kamil Awang was one morning looking for me after clocking in; we were both then serving in Kuching, Sarawak. When I met up with him in his chambers he was distraught and he told me that he had last night received a telephone call from the then Chief Justice asking him to dismiss the election petition that he was going to hear in Kota Kinabalu.

He sought my opinion as to what to do with the telephone call.

We went into the possibility of making a police report or of writing to the Chief Justice a letter to record what he had said over the telephone but in the end he decided against it since it will be his words against that of the Chief Justice,” he said. Chin told the court that he was happy to later on learn that Kamil did not bow to the pressure by the Chief Justice and went on to hear the petition and thereafter making a decision based on the law and evidence.

Now, though no longer the prime minister and so no longer able to carry out his threat to remove judges which should therefore dispel any fear which any judge may have of him, if ever there was such fear, nevertheless the coalition party that he led is still around and the second respondent won on a ticket of that coalition party and it may cross someone’s mind that I may have an axe to grind against the party concerned or any member thereof. “The petitioner in this case may also have similar view with regard to my defeat by a candidate standing on the ticket of a party to which he belongs.

Here's the group picture taken (25.05.1997)...

I wonder how corruptable is our judiciary...But I'm also confident there are good judges within...